Leafwater Station

Leafwater Station is a holding of Clan Anakokeuri, a native Evermornan clan with high standing in the Cobalt Protectorate, though it is a relatively small polity by spacer standards. The station is also close enough to the homeworld that its demographics are not cleanly distinct from that of Anakokeuri's broader population and it functions as a municipality under the clan's normal legal structures (i.e. the merit-informed, sortition-based selection of town council members).

Military engagements in planetary orbit are highly uncommon, even in the era of the Armoa Conflict, but Leafwater Station would treat enemy vessels like any other debris to be encysted or deflected with concentrated maser fire should this eventuality come to pass. The gel coating of the station's rear half make it extremely difficult to assail from this direction. Leafwater is also a common staging ground for Cobalt Knights search-and-rescue operations, so one or two Tetrain Class cruisers are almost always found nearby and in freshly-stocked condition thanks to the station's provided services.

Captured debris is sorted by the crew and reprocessed into spare parts and resource chips through a combination of SCWO digesters, auto-forges and good-ol'-fashioned space colonist ingenuity. Aside from station-keeping activities, excess materials are sold to visiting spacers or exported to industrial centers for further processing. Forensic investigations may be conducted on debris before it has been fully recycled to aid in scientific or even criminal justice pursuits. For example, chunks of an aging satellite caught by the drones are to be expected as systems fail due to long exposure to the hostile space environment, but the appearance of bone fragments might suggest the final disposition of a spacer who's ship's transponder signal went dark the year before, while evidence of non-Evermornan microbes might suggest the presence of undetected alien espionage activities in the system.

Leafwater Station possesses all the usual features found in bubbletowns, but has been augmented into an infrastructural drone control platform through the addition of several unique systems. The rear envelope of the station features a thick outer coating of a gelatinous metamaterial that can be manipulated through the application of masers and electrical fields. This manipulation is accomplished through the inclusion of microscopic machines that contain copper to sensitize them to these electrical fields, contributing to the material's unique translucent green hue.   During debris-sweeping operations, drones launch from beneath Leafwater's coating, 'budding' from the surface of the station like living cells cleaving from their parents' membranes during asexual reproduction. Leafwater's drone operators direct the drones into the paths of debris clouds that would otherwise endanger space traffic around Evermorn. The metamaterial coating is specially engineered to capture high-velocity debris without itself breaking apart and, eventually, returns to its roughly spherical shape through a combination of natural surface tension and the drone's own electromagnetic influence. The micromachines in the gel are oriented towards the drone and are coated in artificial cilia which gradually pull captured debris inward towards the drone's core, rendering the outer layers of the gel ready to absorb new debris. Genetically engineered extremophilic bacteria found in culture vessels along the drone's hull break down organic compounds captured in this manner to both produce more gel and to make later processing of chemical pollutants more manageable. Eventually, when a drone has become laden with enough debris, it returns to Leafwater Station and is resorbed while other drones moving beneath the station's own coat direct the debris towards ports for further processing by the station's reclamation crews.   To support and supplement the activities of its drone fleet, each of Leafwater Station's six laser hardpoints has been upgraded to support three multispectral scope turrets each. A dedicated free electron laser in each bank produces powerful maser beams the station can use to spall large debris in to chunks small enough to capture, influence the trajectories of debris too big to capture right away to prevent planetary impact, and maneuver drones that somehow become stricken in a way that they can't maneuver under their own power.

Like all bubbletowns, Leafwater Station leans into the whimsical aesthetics in part enabled by ruggedly simple base construction methods. In this case, the station's radiators and aft reaction control tether take the form of artificial leaves and braided vines, respectively. The membrane visible beneath the gel coating is colored to look like a new flower bud, the forwardmost edges a golden color so that, in combination with the crew section and solar collector illumined in the light of the Evermorn System's home star, the station looks something like a giant flower with an extended stamen. This appearance is enhanced by the presence of spacecraft docking at the forward extent of the station, which take on the appearance of pollenating insects when viewed from afar.